Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Staunton, April 3 – Many in the West
following the decision of more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats to
show solidarity with the British think that Vladimir Putin has been driven into
an untenable position and soon will be forced to back down in the face of this
Western resolve, Irina Pavlova says.

But that is not how Putin views
things, the US-based Russian historian says He doesn’t feel he “trapped” but
rather in a position to intensify his attacks on the West because he “considers
himself smarter” that his Western counterparts and thus is “raising the stakes”
in ways that the West has forgotten how to counter (ivpavlova.blogspot.com/2018/04/blog-post.html#more).

According
to Pavlova, the Kremlin’s strategy toward the West has been in place for some
time and is based on “a vision of Russia as a great power in the Stalinist style
for namely under him and in his understanding, the country experienced the peak
of great power status, having generated a model for emulation.”

The
only difference is that Stalin strove to Sovietize Western countries while “Putin
and company seek the fundamental weakening of the West and the destruction of
close coordination between Europe and the US.”

Given
that goal, the historian continues, the Kremlin’s power depends not on its GDP
but on “consistently, decisively and aggressively speculating on the weaknesses
and problems of present-day Western civilization” and on Moscow’s ability to
use the technological achievements of the West “to strengthen [the Russian]
regime.”

Putin’s
strength is further enhanced by the fact that he “adroitly plays on the human
weaknesses of the representatives of Western countries, corrupting some
successfully, dividing and perverting them.” As for the sanctions the West
threatens, “they only strengthen this regime above all in the eyes of its own
population.”

In
response to the Western expulsion of Russian diplomats, Pavlova says, Putin
adopted not only the mirror response of expelling Western diplomats but
directly “accused the countries of Western civilization not simply in Russophobia
but in the support of Nazism” Unfortunately, up to now, few in the West have
taken note of this in the serious way it deserves.

That
charge is part of a special operation which is “the most important part of the
great power strategy of the present-day Kremlin.” Today in fact, the Stalinists
in Russia are enjoying their greatest heyday since 1953. And while the West
doesn’t want to admit it, it is confronted by a Russia that has become “a Brave
Re-Stalinized World.”

This
strategy, Pavlova argues, is being used by the Kremlin to “completely justify both
the Stalinist USSR and Stalin, who [in its vision] ‘saved Western civilization
from Nazism/fascism.” Indeed, “the Russian authorities have for a long time
successfully privatized the role of the chief world fighter” against “the
invented threat” of the revival of Nazism.

Putin’s
Russia seeks to portray the Western world as facilitating this invented threat “not
only in the former Soviet republics of the USSR – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
and Ukraine – but in the Western countries themselves,” she argues. And it has
created an organization “The World Without Nazism” with branches in many countries
including the US to push this line.

“The
sad fact of present-day reality is that the West is not prepared to oppose
modernized Stalinism,” Pavlova says. Expelling diplomats and imposing economic
sanctions “will not solve the problem. Nor will even a revived containment as
that term is usually understood do the trick, she argues.

Instead, the West must face up to the challenge of how to
“force Russia forever to stop falling for the temptations of Stalinist great
power notions.”And to do that, it must
start with an understanding of what it means that Putin has chosen Stalin and
Stalinism as his models for emulation and legitimation.

“It
is possible,” Pavlova says, “that “’the key’ to the resolution of the world
problem known as ‘Russia’ should be sought precisely here.”What must happen, she argues, is that the
Nuremburg tribunal must be reconstituted to render judgment on the other
totalitarian system of the 20th century, Soviet communism.

“Only
by depriving present-day Stalinism of its foundation can one hope for a normal
relationship with Russia in a globalized world.”